Hints for Optimizing your action bar: Put the Mark/Pet Attack Macro in slot 0, and put the Shoot Macro in slot 9. Then link the scroll down button on your mouse to slot 0, and the scroll up to slot 9. Put the Concussive Shot Macro in slot - and put your Frost Trap in slot =. Then link shift + mouse scroll up to -, and shift + scroll down to =.

Presto, your most useful spells in the most useful place, and you have freed up slots 1-8 for Raptor Strike, Mongoose Bite, Multishot, etc.

Comment by Tanaburs

This is a great spell.

My optimum damage (after long tests) come from this sequence:

Arcane / white / aimed / steady / white / arcane...

Trying to use concussive shot wastes mana and breaks the rythm.

OF COURSE, I'm talking about PvE DPS here.

Comment by Gargamell

Use this for Steady shot, and dont use multi+arcane it lowers your dps. 2 hunters in our guild is doing it like this spamming this macro + their buffs (rapid fire and beast withing for bm hunters) and useable trinkets and they are top on the dmg meter

Comment by innovacious

Comment by djdawg89

this skill will seriously improve your dps but with a few drwabacks1.the damage is physical so armor affects it2.if your weapon is too fast this will not fit into rotationso for me this doesnt come close to arcane because arcane is arcane damage(little protection from) and its instant...just depends on your style and weaponnice skill though ^^

Comment by camarouge

Remember! You get an extra 175 damage against dazed targets. Fury Warriors spamming piercing howl get the added benefit of heroic strike, it should be no different with hunters. Use Concussive Shot whenever the CD is off; if you have Rapid Fire on, you can get two Steady Shots off before that 4 sec is up. If you don't, immediately begin casting Steady Shot while CS is travelling to its target.

Comment by Tankadin

on a pvp stand point AS(arc shot in this case) could be as effective as long as you have AoV, the reason i say AS could be effective is you can shoot it on the run so you can shoot, run up WC, then jump over them and start hammering away again, while ur pet is still attacking, this comes especially handy when fighting squishes like mages/locks and they cant hit u which helps, though this move can be an ace in the hole if some1 immoblizes you and for some reason is in your firing range

Comment by Giraf

About Steady shot being affected by haste, yes it does.Your global cooldown doesnt..So if u have a weapon thats fast, then u will clip autoshots if u try to put anything into the shot rotation other then steady shot. So dont get a weapon thats faster then 1.8 or something once all haste is proced.. from there on it gets hard with lag and all no to clip autos.

Comment by zapiks44

Does anyone know whether Steady Shot is increased by your arrow DPS? I've been debating other hunters about this, and it seems there are conflicting views. From my own tests it appears it isn't affected, but others insist it is. Anyone know for sure?

Comment by Blackearth

I have a question, for example, i have Sunfury Bow of The Phoenix , for a steady shot attack, the base damage would 169 - 314 Damage ¿?

Comment by superhumanjesse

well, i was reading wowwiki and i noticed it said steady shots cast time was affected by ammo pouches and serpent's swiftness, but then you had to had .5 and .2 seconds to it so the actual cast time of SS should be 1.787 with no haste. so the optimal weapon speed should be 2.466.

Comment by sgtsolidus

I've found that auto shot is great to spam with steady shot. A good spam macro would be

basically it casts steady shot whenever it's ready and auto shoots the rest of the time while making the error messages invisible for just this macro. once you get kill command it casts that whenever its up. personally i add trinkets in there

/userandom trinket,trinket works great, you can put it anywhere between showtooltip and the script line it basically uses your trinkets whever they are up. also if you beastmastery u can add

/castrandom Bestial Wrath,class skill. always remember to put the EXACT name of the trinket or spell or else it won't work. Hope this helps.

Edit:steady shot and auto shot by themselves with aspect of the viper and no other spells can give you an endless grind with no downtime. Although adding kill command isn't a bad thing. the original macro is set as such.-Josa

Comment by TheMediator

Currently no reason to use higher than rank 1, because the increase in mana use is terrible compared to how much more damage it adds... spamming potions is NOT an option in WOTLK due to potion sickness, so you'll have to find ways to keep your mana bar full without hurting your DPS too much... and down ranking is definitely one of them (Perhaps they'll fix the mana cost once enough hunters do it).

Comment by firstartemis

Take a look at the tool tip again all

A steady shot that causes unmodified weapon damage, plus ammo, plus It now scales with attack power too.

Comment by Theodorakopoulos

how does it affect steady auto macros with serpent swiftness now thats its 2secs?

Comment by guitarispower

Just ran some 25 man naxx last night and all 3 of our hunters were on top of the meters. Our top dpser by a very small number (less than 1000 damage) was a MM hunter. After crunching the numbers of what the MM dps would be after the nerf, the MM hunter would still be well in the lead for damage. The nerfs to BM are major, but this one isn't so bad that you'll drop from 1st to 5th or worse.

Comment by cucumberzr4chump

is it practical 2 use this in PvE? (sry im a lvl 52 hunter noob) and wondering if i should use this while lvling, it definately does increase my dps but it costs alot of mana by the end of the fight

if any1 can help it would b greatly appreciated

Comment by safafawgar

In cata. this spell with regenerate your focas, (12 per second, rather than 6.)

Comment by Pwningdanoobs

I hope they fix this move, I waited a while to get it, and when i got it, it was depressing to see it do less damage then my auto shot

Comment by Cialbi

Steady Shot still has the old 2.0 second cast time, despite what the tooltip says. With our new 1.0 second GCD, the haste soft-cap (enough haste to make Steady Shot's cast time shorter than the GCD) is thus far greater than before.

The level 81 ability Cobra Shot will fill the same roll as this shot for Survival hunters, and maybe Beast Mastery hunters as well. Marksmanship hunters have too many talents that are Steady Shot exclusive for them to use Cobra Shot much if at all.

Comment by elitearthas

from 10% RAP... to 2.1% RAP... all because pro hunters smashing the dps charts against the 20+k per spell casters?

Comment by hannibalektr

Cast time from 1.5 to 1.6 to 1.94, nerf, nerf and more nerf. Ok, I want to flame about many abilities that have been nerfed on my hunter because it's been frustrating being a BM hunter since WOTLK.

Cobra Shot however seems to replace steady shot all together, and the cast time says 1.5 seconds, if that is true your rotation (with the right haste) can hit that sweet spot again. Thanks blizzard, thanks for fixing what has been broken for a long time, "steady shot"... now "Cobra Shot". I hope we see more of the world evening out in PVP and PVE.

Comment by kronlin

Do you continue to Auto Shoot while casting Steady Shot? If not, is there a best way to time Steady Shot between Auto Shots?

Comment by Nerobyrne

It's rather odd, I'm playing a beastmaster hunter, and when i trigger Focus Fire (5 charges) together with Rapid Fire I have ~70% ranged haste, this includes my basic haste from rating.

Yet somehow my cobra shot is still at 1.16 sec cast time, while standard it's 1.89. it should be alot more, can someone explain how this is calculated, it's extremely foggy and not explained anywhere in WoW at all. (This has been a problem for blizzard ever since Diablo, actually, never explaining their rating systems.)

This is also good time to clear up some of the confusion about hunter shot cast times. Essentially, ranged attacks in World of Warcraft have always had a built in 0.5 second delay to their cast time. Since this does not apply to instant attacks, for hunters it only really applies to Aimed Shot, Steady Shot and Cobra Shot. Prior to the 4.0.6 changes, Aimed Shot was listed with a 3.0 cast time, but due to the delay, in reality it had a cast time that amounted to 3.5 seconds. Now that it is listed at 2.4 seconds, the actual cast time is now closer to 2.9, which is where we want it to be. We realize this caused some confusion (even for us), and we’re going to see if we can make the 0.5 second delay more visible in the future.

Hope that explains it. :)

Comment by Muratsuki

For Beastmasters and Survival Hunters, Steady Shot now turns into Cobra Shot at level 81, so those two specs will no longer see the ability in their spellbooks.

Comment by mecheye

If used as an opening move, Auto-Shot no longer waits until Steady Shot finishes casting to be turned on, so watch out.